Micro-cinematography: Blow-fly eating Honey.
| The ingenious Gilbreth clock, graduated to one-thousandths of a minute. | The rack, showing disposition of component parts for the assembling test. |
Micro-motion Study: The latest Development in Scientific Management.
It is an establishment devoted to the manufacture of machinery for making braiding, such as trimmings for ladies' dresses, and so forth. The machines are built for the most part from small light castings, which are machined only slightly, but which must fit together without the necessity of filing or finicking hand-work. In order to improve the efficiency of the factory and incidentally to augment its output and profit, experts were called in from time to time to say where modifications of process might reduce the manufacturing costs. Different operations in the assembling of the pieces were timed. The result was the discovery of more expeditious methods of putting the pieces together. Such time-study investigations also supplied a basis for computing the various scales and systems of payment for work done.
Notwithstanding the high pitch of efficiency to which the factory was brought by these methods, Mr. Aldrich felt convinced that still further speeding-up might be accomplished without over-driving the men. So he called in Mr. Gilbreth and his cinematographic method. In order to obtain the highest results, the most expert workman was taken as the subject of the experiment.
In one corner of the assembling room the wall and floor were marked off into four-inch squares. In this space was placed the bench, together with the sets of component parts. Here there was a slight divergence from the existing practice in the factory. Instead of taking the pieces from various boxes, packets of parts were placed in convenient positions upon a rack. These were placed in the proper sequence, so that the workman was saved the task of thinking when selecting the successive pieces. He was able to take them up quickly and correctly in a mechanical kind of way.